Don Harlow responds to some of James Chandler's comments about 

Esperanto vs. Ido:



JC > And Z himself, for a time, proposed natural forms. <



Could you give a reference on this? To the best of my knowledge, 

the only time Z proposed so-called "natural" forms was in the 

reform project of 1894 -- which, as far as I can tell, was 

basically a ruse to defuse Trompeter's personal reformomania 

(Trompeter was at the time financing the only Esperanto magazine).



JC > There are grammatical rules in Esperanto which are of 

debatable value.  The compulsory agreement between adjective 

and noun adds nothing to the clarity of the language.  The 

compulsory accusative is also largely unnecessary; <



KC > The adjective-noun agreement and accusative ending allow 

*great* flexibility in the language, particularly useful for 

(a) poetry, (b) translation from ethnic languages, (c) emphasis. <



JC > I disagree.  So did HJ, Jespersen, the Delegation...... <



About HJ I know nothing.  Jespersen, Couturat and company had 

very little experience with actually _using_ Esperanto (Couturat 

was supposed to speak the language, but as far as I know all of 

his correspondence with Zamenhof was in French; Jespersen's 

knowledge of Esperanto was even more limited).  As far as I can 

tell, of the members of the Delegation who supported Ido and 

spoke Esperanto, the only two really capable speakers were Gaston 

Moch (who, I believe, was not actually a member, but a stand-in 

for Emil Boirac) and Louis de Beaufront -- whose preference for 

Ido seems to have been based largely on non-linguistic 

considerations.  Those who have done much writing in Esperanto 

(for my own stuff, mainly translated, see my page at 



http://www.webcom.com/~donh/don/don.html



) generally approve very much of both the -N ending and of

noun-adjective agreement, which gives a delightful flexibility 

to the language, as Ken stated.



JC > This situation [deriving feminine nouns from male/default 

version] is not satisfactory.  Surely most Esperantists would 

like their UEA to adopt an official suffix, and the consequence 

of that would be to make roots neutral.  I often wonder what kind 

of people run the UEA. <



Since UEA has neither the right nor the capability to make 

changes in Esperanto (except through the normal processes of 

_proposing_ and _using_ such changes -- which, because of the 

large variety of viewpoints represented in their membership, 

would be very difficult to justify), it really doesn't matter 

_what_ kind of people run it.  (In fact, _I_ run it, and Bill 

Harmon who occasionally posts here runs it, and Ken -- if he's 

a member -- runs it.  And thousands of other people in some 120 

different countries.)



You should be aware that UEA is a _private_ organization which 

has taken as its purpose _service to its Esperanto-speaking 

members_, and is not some sort of linguistic clearing-house.



The _Akademio de Esperanto_ would be the organization that is 

tasked with such activity; but the Academy's charter makes it 

basically a _reactive_ organization, and in its few attempts at 

proactivity, it has generally come a cropper.  I expect that it 

will get around to officializing -ic^-, for instance -- fifty 

years after every other Esperanto speaker in the world is 

actually using it.



Please be aware of the logistical difficulties in mandating 

changes, by fiat or ukase, in a language which is spoken by 

hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of people scattered 

in diaspora around the world.